Many of Chicago’s early works were fibreglass and metal sculptures, firework installations and firework displays. She married her second husband sculptor Lloyd Hamrol during this period. Throughout this time she continued to develop explicit feminist and sexual imagery in her work.
Starting her career, Chicago worked at several California universities as a painting instructor and in 1970 launched the very first feminist art programme in the state university at Fresno. Following her own ideology, she dropped her surname of Cohen and adopted the name Chicago. To her, this avoided being part of the traditional naming conventions of bearing the name of the father or husband.